Malema upstaged by EC electoral chaos

Chaos erupted over election candidate lists on Wednesday in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, where the Solomon Mahlangu Memorial Lecture was delivered by ANC Youth League president Julius Malema, the SABC reported.

Disgruntled residents of a number of wards in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro disrupted proceedings out of anger over the list of ANC electoral candidates.

The ANC has already had to defend itself in four court cases over the Eastern Cape list process and 56 of its members have reportedly brought an urgent application in the Mthatha High Court for the Independent Electoral Commission reject the lists.

Two men have been arrested for allegedly plotting to kill five ANC members in the province because of the lists.

ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe said on Tuesday that this alleged hit list showed the extent to which the situation had deteriorated in the Eastern Cape.

He said threats against ANC members in the province would not deter the party from fulfilling its mandate to South Africans.

“As the ANC, we will not tolerate unwarranted diversions that are informed by counter-revolutionary agendas.”

The ANC’s ally, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), reportedly warned on Tuesday that the opposition Democratic Alliance could take control of Nelson Mandela Bay.

“You may a find a very embarrassing situation: Nelson Mandela Bay under a DA leadership,” Cosatu’s secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi said.

“If we are not careful, and if we allow people to take our movement in the direction they are taking, very soon we may have to call someone ‘President Zille’—which would be an absolute nightmare.”

He said some of the people complaining about the ANC list process were right to be aggrieved.

“It is true that in some cases, popular candidates of the people have fallen victim to the powerful cliques that have appointed themselves gatekeepers,” he said in an address prepared for delivery at a National Union of Metal Workers’ of South Africa (Numsa) conference.

“It is true that in some cases guidelines have been side-stepped and frustrated.

“In some cases political space is monopolised by those who have money.”—Sapa